Add Ube To Your Sweet Potato Pie For A Pop Of Purple

Classic holiday dishes are classics for a reason. However, having the same iterations of dishes year after year can start to become boring. Consider changing up one of your holiday classics this year with a simple ingredient swap. You can give your sweet potato pies a colorful twist by swapping out regular sweet potatoes for ube: purple sweet potatoes popular in Filipino cooking. These colorful root vegetables still have a light sweetness and a similar texture to American sweet potatoes when cooked. But, unlike American sweet potatoes, ube has a brilliant dark-purple color that will make any pie made with it a guaranteed show-stopper.

You can swap out the traditional sweet potatoes for ube in this simple sweet potato pie recipe for an easy rendition. The recipe calls for two cups of sweet potato puree, and it's easy to make your ube puree at home. Simply cook your ube in an oven or air fryer until the entire potato is tender and soft. After they have cooked, let them cool and remove the skins. You can then puree the ube till it reaches a smooth consistency. From there you can make the ingredient swap in the recipe and follow the instructions as normal. You'll be able to tell when your ube pie has finished cooking when the crust is golden brown and the filling has become firm in the center. You'll then need to let the pie cool completely before serving.

While you could use the original pie toppings of pecans and whipped cream, you could also choose to use unique toppings that complement the ube. One of the most common flavor pairings for ube is coconut. The gentle sweetness from the coconut and the natural sweetness of the ube pair excellently with each other. Bring a hint of coconut into your ube pie by opting for a coconut whipped cream, which is surprisingly easy to make. All you need is coconut cream. Chill your coconut cream overnight, then whip that cold cream till you start to get peaks, and you'll have coconut whipped cream. You can add powdered sugar to your whipped cream if you want it sweeter.

Instead of using pecans in your ube pie, think about using macadamia nuts. Macadamia nuts are another popular flavor pairing for ube and, similar to coconut, they have a light sweetness to them. Lightly toast your macadamia nuts and either use whole ones as a topping or crush them up. You can gently coat your nuts in a cinnamon sugar coating to connect more of the flavors in the pie.